Philosophy Professor Dies at Age 71

After a Harvard career that spanned over 40 years, Pierce Professor of Philosophy Emeritus Burton S. Dreben '49 died of lymphoma on Sunday at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was 71 years old.

Dreben served as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) between 1973 and 1975, where he cut graduate school enrollments while championing academic ideals.

"I believe in serious scholarship," Dreben said when he was appointed Dean of the GSAS in September of 1973. "I know it's terribly old-fashioned but I have no apologies about it."

Dreben was also an active member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, serving as the body's parliamentarian during the tumultuous 1960s, when he argued for open debate between students and Faculty members over contentious issues like draft deferment and the 1969 student strike.

"No one ever had the feeling that he was a politician," Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky said of his tenure as parliamentarian. "He is totally honest and totally above board."

Faculty members remember a lighter side to the professor, as well.

"He was a delightful man, filled with lots of little idiosyncrasies," said Secretary of the Faculty John B. Fox Jr.

Fox recalled a special meeting convened by then Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky, where Dreben--a key participant in the meeting--did not show up until the meeting was already well underway.

When asked where he had been, Dreben explained that he had been listening to a musical performance on his car radio the whole time.

"It was such a fabulous performance that when he had got to the Holyoke Center where the meeting was, he didn't want to lose the signal, so he spent 20 or 25 minutes driving around," Fox said.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 praised the professor's appreciation for whimsy as well.

"He had... [an] impish good humor that one finds too infrequently in our intellectual giants," said Lewis, who was Dreben's dissertation advisee.

Fox said Dreben could break the ice inadvertently though his personal rituals, too.

"If you were with Burt inside of a building anywhere, he was sort of in this constant status of personal temperature adjustment," Fox said. "He would take off his jacket and hat and glove and rubbers...and then he'd sit on and take off his sweater and put his jacket back on.

"It was just comical to watch this process going on," Fox added.

Dreben served as an advisor and mentor to a generation of Harvard scholars, including Lewis and Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic Warren D. Goldfarb, the department chair of the philosophy department, with whom he co-wrote a book.

"He was tremendously supportive of his students, a mentor in the strongest and best sense," Lewis said.

Though he never received a Ph.D. himself, Dreben taught in Harvard's philosophy department during its hey-day, when his colleagues included Theory of Justice author John Rawls and logician W.V. Quine.

More recently, he taught graduate courses on Quine, Russell, Wittgenstein and other modern philosophers at Boston University.

He also served as a chair of Harvard's Society of Fellows, which selects an elite group of young scholars to live at Harvard for a year and study with their peers and more senior members of the Society.